


Kintsugi

by starbear (panda_hiiro)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Artificial Intelligence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 08:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panda_hiiro/pseuds/starbear
Summary: After returning from war on Kerberos, the Galaxy Garrison assigns it's best soldier a new job planetside, along with a new partner in the form of an AI companion named Lance. When a mission goes sideways, both Shiro and Lance are forced to examine their roles as part of a system, as well as what it means to be 'whole.'





	Kintsugi

**_kintsugi 金継ぎ_ **

_(n.) (v. phr)  “to repair with gold”; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken_

 

* * *

 

 

The sentry lay dead when Shiro found it, face down in a puddle of dirty water iridescent with oil slick and the shifting reflection of neon lights from the street.

Smooth metal tarnished with grime and abuse, it’s only human aspect was that it was shaped, vaguely and crudely, like a man. That was old-school Galra tech for you - clunky, outmoded, easily identifiable, same as the metal slag pieced together for Shiro’s arm. Nothing like the stuff running now: sleek and sophisticated, silicone flesh even more convincing than the real thing.

Shiro liked the old models better. Simpler times.

Warm light flickered beside him, and there was Lance, his form emanating from the projector unit humming to life in Shiro’s hand - Bayard model, white plastic casing engraved with the clean lines of Altea Technologies logo. The rain, where it passed through Lance’s translucent projection, glittered like sequins as it caught the light.

“Well,” Lance said, surveying the scene, “Isn't this a lovely morning?”

They stood wedged into a tiny alleyway between a Japanese curry restaurant and a Chinese electronics store three blocks up from the Hudson, the briny sewage smell of the river lingering in the air like bad cologne. A feeble rain fell in misty spurts, making a halo around the jumble of holographic advertisements crowding the street -  an effervescent, eternal glow that rose up from the ground, halogen colors refracted through the atmosphere, trapped and muddling together into a brown, impenetrable smudge of sky.

Shiro hadn’t seen stars since he’d come back planetside. Not since Kerberos.

“Hello, Lance,” Shiro said, not without a certain degree of fondness, “You know it’s almost 0100.”

“Technically,” Lance said, “That’s still morning.”

It had been over half a year since the Galaxy Garrison had reassigned Shiro; after Kerberos, it was no wonder they wanted to keep him grounded, and running down rogues and missing Galra tech seemed a fitting job for someone best known in the ranks as “the Champion.” Upon receiving his new assignment, he’d undergone a barrage of personality tests and psych evals, which had culminated in the programming of an artificial intelligence unit designed specifically to be his partner. Where they’d come up with the name ‘Lance,’ Shiro didn’t know, nor did he understand what the excessiveness of Lance’s programmed personality said about his own psyche. In essence, Lance was part right-hand man, part warden, maintaining a constant link to Garrison headquarters to report on Shiro’s every move, and though Shiro had chafed at an AI babysitter at first, it was impossible not to like Lance - perhaps he’d been programmed for that, too, designed to be exactly what Shiro didn’t even know he wanted. He didn’t think Lance saw himself that way, but it was hard to tell with AI what was genuine and what was prefabricated response. For the most part, Shiro didn’t think about it, and settled for enjoying Lance’s company, virtual though it might be.

“I’ve got a lead on our rogue, by the way. Drone feed picking up erratic movement on 26th. Guess he booked it quick after taking out our buddy here.” Lance looked down at the sentry’s ruined faceplate, a sparking mess of cables protruding from the singed ring of a bullet hole where its forehead should have been. “Poor dude. Is it really okay for us to just leave him here? I feel bad about it.”

A thread of phantom pain crept up Shiro’s right arm along the circuits where his veins used to be. In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t so different from that machine - cut from the same metal, bound to a system of rules and duty he couldn’t break free from.

“It’s just a droid,” Shiro said, as he turned to leave the broken sentry behind.

He was halfway down the block before Lance reappeared, blinking into place beside him, matching Shiro’s hurried pace with a lilting bounce in his long stride. He’d adopted a yellow rain slicker, tacky vinyl clashing with the trim, clean lines and olive drab of his Galaxy Garrison uniform.

“You know that Bayard only has a range of like, twelve feet, right? You gotta let me keep up with you.” Lance turned his face skyward, projection flickering in time to the erratic rhythm of the rain. “Man, I love it when it rains, though. I wish I could feel it. Real rain, I mean, not what’s in virtual.”

“You’re not missing that much,” Shiro said.

“Yeah, you can say that, ‘cause you know what it’s like,” Lance said. “How come you haven’t come to see me in virtual, anyway? It’s been forever.”

“Sorry,” Shiro said. “I’ve just been busy.”

“Really? Cause it kinda feels like you’ve been avoiding me, and my feelings are super hurt, man.”

“I’m not. You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, only ‘cause we’re working.” Lance paused, mouth turned in a petulant frown. “It’s just, it’s not the same here. You know? I miss you, that’s all.”

The sentiment, plainly stated, gave Shiro pause. Some unnameable ache tugged at him, a familiar longing that he’d been trying to push aside abruptly swelling in intensity. In the dim of the alley Lance was a brilliant apparition, warm glow and pale light - bright enough that Shiro didn’t notice the rustling in the shadows until Lance tensed with intent, alert focus.

“Shiro! There!”

The figure in the shadows froze, mid-crouch, like an animal frozen in the light emanating from Shiro’s Bayard. Shiro couldn’t make out much - long, unkempt hair; a broad frame hidden by dark, ragged clothing; the white of their eyes, bright in the darkness. A rogue - the last remnants of the off-world rebellions quashed by the Galra-Garrison alliance. Experiments, fabricated soldiers meant to be stronger and more efficient than sentry robots; when they’d turned on their creators, they had acted with a desperation most couldn’t understand, the constant adrenaline of fight-or-flight syndrome making them stronger and more unpredictable than seemed possible for something that was, in the end, a mass of carbon gathered together to approximate human shape.

“I’m a special agent with the Galaxy Garrison,” Shiro said, “Don’t move. Lance, run an ID check.”

“On it.” A thin ray of yellow light cut out from the Bayard, shining into the face of the huddled figure. A long face, haggard, indiscernible. The light lingered for only a moment before turning red, and Lance, voice rising in urgency, said, “Shiro, he’s -”

The shot cut through the air with a singing hiss, resonating through the close quarters as it hit the Bayard and shattered it into a mess of circuitry and plastic. In an instant Lance was gone, the afterimage of where he’d been lingering like a ghost as Shiro struggled to adjust to the sudden darkness. Tactile sensation was not something the Galra had afforded his right hand, but the abrupt absence of the weight he’d held there was a heavy, palpable thing.

Shiro narrowly dodged the volley of fire that followed, instinct kicking in as he lowered his stance and charged at the rogue. A sensation like fire coursed through his right arm as it buzzed to life, magenta glow congealing around it as the hot metal sung through the air. It wasn’t much of a fight - the rogue was a good shot, but Shiro had never lost a match in close quarters. This was what he’d been trained to do, to fight, to kill when told - and his opponent was nothing more than a copy that had broken from its purpose, a dangerous element, a threat that needed to be eliminated. Not human - but the fear was there all the same, reflected in wide, dark eyes, in a startlingly young face illuminated by the purplish glow of Shiro’s right hand. He’d seen that look on Kerberos, many times.

Shiro wished Lance was there, to tell him to do his job. Or, maybe, to tell him to stop.

After a moment’s pause, stretched out like an infinity, Shiro grabbed the rogue’s gun, the heat of his right hand melting it into an unidentifiable lump of metal and plastic. He stood back, gave the rogue a slight shove, and said,

“Go. Just go.”

The rogue offered no words of thanks; just stared at him a moment and then, wordlessly, rushed off, away from the dark gloom of the alley, into the glittering anonymity of the night. Shiro watched him go, the glow of his hand fading out as he picked up the broken pieces of his Bayard - pieces of Lance -  pocketed them, then turned towards home.

 

* * *

 

The rain had petered off into a fine mist by the time Shiro reached the twenty-floor tenement he called home, a chunky block of pale concrete crammed in-between two other, identical buildings, all gray and drab and in a state of mild disrepair. Shifting pools of light flickered across the cracked asphalt, the blue glow of holo-screens reflected off the dead glass of shuttered store windows decorated in a hodgepodge amalgam of languages: bubbly Hangul bleeding into looped Sanskrit curves, juxtaposed against blocky kanji and Cyrillic characters. Somewhere, in the distance, the faint boom of a Garrison recruitment ad sounded - ‘ _even the sky’s no limit at the Galaxy Garrison!’_ Shiro could remember a time when that had appealed to him; a time before he’d gotten landlocked here on the ground.

Someone shifted past him, a faceless shroud in a hoodie and silvered glasses on their way to destinations unknown. Shiro stilled, waited for them to pass, watching them with a heavy tension set in his shoulders; paranoia had been a familiar friend since Kerberos, but Lance’s presence had helped keep that at bay, knowing he always had him there to look over his shoulder. Shiro hadn’t realized, until then, how much he’d come to rely on that. He’d be okay; he just needed to get inside.

The stairwell smelled like piss, cigarettes, and weed as Shiro made the slow, long climb up to his door: an ascension, rising up from the noise of the street to the secluded grime inside. A series of colorful obscenities scrawled in a sloppy hand decorated the width of his door, greeting him at the entrance to his apartment. The sentiment had been there for close to four months - previously, Shiro had been fastidious in his efforts to remove similar messages, but upon realizing they reappeared as soon as he cleared them, he’d decided it would be a better deterrent to simply leave them be.

Inside the apartment, there was little to mark it as his own: a mattress shoved in the corner, fastidiously made up with plain, gray sheets; a low table and a small cushion shoved underneath it; a mini fridge and a hot plate on a narrow counter. 500 square feet of anonymous living. He didn’t bother with the light switch, heading instead straight for the VR deck sitting on his table. Compact, gray and solid, stamped proudly with the Galaxy Garrison logo, as if they hadn’t copped this model straight from Olkarion. Two thin cables ran to a series of trodes that Shiro attached to his temples. With a careful sort of reverence he arranged the shattered pieces of his Bayard on the table; then, he switched the deck on, and with a weightless lurch, fell into virtual space.

 

* * *

 

Before Shiro even opened his eyes, he heard the ocean.

He smelled it, the tang of saline heavy in the humid air, tasted it on his tongue. He curled his toes and felt the warm grit of sand beneath his feet.

And, when he opened his eyes, Lance was there.

“Took you long enough.” Lance propped his hands on his hips, white linen pants rolled up to just below his knee, a thin yellow shirt hanging loose and open on his lean frame. It was night, and the stars in the clear sky above him reflected, mirror-like, in the dark tides below. “You have any idea how long I’ve been waiting here?”

In real space, Shiro sat alone in a cold corner of his bare-bones apartment, hooked up to an old-model VR deck with only the broken plastic pieces of his Bayard for company. But here, in virtual, he could reach out and pull Lance to him; here, every part of Lance felt intimately, overwhelmingly real - the firm lines of his body, the warmth radiating from his skin, the subtle fragrant smell of him even sweeter than the saltwater air.

“Sorry,” Shiro said, a small tremor working through his voice. He knew that Lance’s Bayard unit had a link to the Garrison mainframe, preserving his data; he knew that, but he still hadn’t been able to let go of the shattered casing on his way home, clinging to it as if it were some precious, fragile thing. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Of course I’m okay. Who do you think you’re talking to, here? Hey. Look at me.” Lance pulled back and touched Shiro’s cheeks, framing his face between his hands. “I’m alright. Okay?”

Shiro took a breath, and nodded.

“Okay.”

Lance looked at Shiro, considering him for a moment, then said,

“You know what I think? I think we need a drink.”

That, Shiro couldn’t argue with.

There was a sudden lurch as the scenery changed and the interior of a house resolved around them, low-res artifacts swiftly smoothing out into the perfect simulacrum of a cozy, well-lived-in beachside cottage. The effect left Shiro disoriented, and he sunk into a plush, worn chair as his head spun.

“I hate it when you do that,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We could have just walked here.”

“Oh, come on, Shiro, we’re in virtual,” Lance said, as he pulled two glasses and a crystal decanter of whiskey out of a cabinet, and poured a drink for both of them. In the warm light, the amber liquor glistened prism-like in the glass. “Teleporting is part of the fun.”

“That must be an AI thing.”

“Complaining must be a human thing, then.”

From outside the open windows, Shiro could still hear the rhythmic sound of the ocean. The house program was small, situated on the virtual beach - a handful of rooms and a wide deck looking out over the wide, pristine water. Despite the visceral reality of it - the quiet crash of the waves, the thick band of the Milky Way coursing through clusters of constellations, the yellow incandescence of the room - this was nothing more than a fantasy landscape. Anyway, everyone knew the only real beaches that existed anymore were replicas, stashed away in high-end resort hotels. Shiro had never been to one; he doubted he ever would.

“So,” Lance said, swirling the glass idly in his hand, and watching Shiro with a sharp, cat-like gleam in his eyes, “What happened? Did you get him?”

“No,” Shiro said.

“Oh.” Lance paused, took a drink, and made a face. “I hate this stuff. I wonder why? I mean, I guess I can’t actually taste it, but still.”

Shiro took a drink from his glass; the whiskey burned smooth, a trail of warmth straight to his gut. Synth response, pre-programmed to stimulate the right circuit in his brain and trick his body into feeling it. What was it like for Lance, who had circuits instead of neural pathways?

“You don’t have to drink it, if you don’t like it,” Shiro said.

“But it makes me look cool.” Lance held his glass up and struck a sultry pose. “Don’t I look cool?”

“Dashing and debonair,” Shiro said.

“Don’t forget devilishly handsome.”

“That too.”

The smile on Lance’s face gentled, and Shiro’s heart swelled at the softness of the expression. For a moment this was all that mattered - this place that didn’t exist, with just the two of them. That familiar longing tugged at him again, tempered by a sullen ache. This was temporary, all of it - he’d have to tell Lance what he’d done, or rather, what he’d failed to do, then Lance would report it to the Garrison and this, all of this, would be gone. The Garrison had no use for soldiers that didn’t follow orders.

As if sensing Shiro’s sudden melancholy, Lance sat his drink down with an abrupt ‘thud,’ and crossed the room to drag out a well-used record player. Retro-vintage, modeled after a hi-fi Pioneer model from the 1960’s; Lance pawed through a collection of records arrayed on the shelf, selected one, and put it on.

“You know what I wanna do? I wanna dance,” he said, as jazzy Sinatra swing started up. Lance closed his eyes, hips swinging and fingers snapping in time to the beat of the music, lip-syncing the opening lines.

“ _Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars…”_ He offered his hand to Shiro, waving at him with an impatient gesture. “C’mon. Dance with me.”

“Dance…?” Shiro shook his head. “Lance. You know I can’t.”

“Sure you can, but first you gotta get your butt over here,” Lance said. “Come _on_.”

Shiro made a few more vague, token noises of protest, but Lance remained insistent and, finally, Shiro was on his feet, his hands on Lance’s hips, Lance’s arms looped around his shoulders as they attempted some vague approximation of rhythm. Lance, for all his bravado, was particularly bad.

“Maybe I should download a dance instruction module for you,” Shiro said, the second time Lance’s foot collided with his own.

“Nah. It's much more fun this way.” Lance rested his head against Shiro’s shoulder as the song changed, shifting to a down-tempo beat with a solo, plaintive trumpet. “I’m not gonna tell them, y’know.”

“What do you mean?”

“About the rogue. You let him go, didn’t you? Okay, you’re not saying anything, so I’m going to take that as a ‘yes,’” Lance said. “It’s alright. I’m not gonna tell them.”

“I didn’t think you had much of a choice,” Shiro said, haltingly.

“Sure I do,” Lance said, “And I’m choosing not to say anything.”

“Why?”

“Because I think you did the right thing.” Lance pulled Shiro to a stop. “Hey. You know. You don’t have to do what they tell you to do.”

Shiro didn’t say anything to that. What could he say? Any agency of his own had been left on Kerberos, along with his right arm and some intangible piece of his soul. A year later and some indelible part of him was still there, stranded on that husk of ice, fighting an invisible war against an invisible enemy for an invisible command. When he’d first woken, back on Earth, surprised and somewhat disappointed to be alive, the process of assessing what was left of him had reminded him of the way Japanese potters would repair broken ceramics with delicate lines of gold lacquer - the ephemeral ‘they’ had put him back together as best they could, but like a shattered piece of pottery, some of the shards were lost forever. It was meant to make him stronger, more valuable; but there was no gold on Shiro’s skin, just an ugly map of scars and sutures.

“I know, you know,” Lance continued, “about Kerberos. It wasn’t your fault, what they made you do. And, I know that you think I’m just here to spy on you for the Garrison, or whatever. I _know_ , okay? It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

“Lance, stop. You don’t have to say that,” Shiro said, his throat dry, “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

“Why?” Lance said, a note of challenge rising in his voice, “Because you don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what? Because you think I’m just programmed to feel this way or something?”

“You were,” Shiro said, as gently as he could manage, “It’s the way they made you. I’m sorry, Lance.”

Lance was quiet for a moment, then said,

“Is this really because you think _I_ can't love you? Or is it because you think _you_ can't be loved?”

The question hung heavy in the air for a long time before Shiro finally said,

“I don't know.”

Lance stared at him, hands on his hips, face scrunched into a disapproving frown. Finally he breathed a sigh, and shrugged.

“I won’t log a report with the Garrison,” he said. “If they ask, I’ll just say some of my data was corrupted when my Bayard was destroyed. End of story. There.”

“Thank you,” Shiro said, the words forced and stilted. Lance, turned away from him to look out towards the distant crashing waves beyond the window, said nothing. “I’m gonna go. I’ll see you later.”

The world fell away around Shiro, melting into low-res monochrome as the connection fizzled out. Instead of the cozy warmth of the beach house, Shiro was left with the bare emptiness of his apartment - blinds drawn shut, but unable to block out the constant shifting of light outside, city glow and city noise still filtering in, a faint flickering of reflected neon creeping around to play on the white, unadorned walls. A cloistered space: high, and empty, and alone.

 

* * *

 

The light filtering through the cracked and yellowed blinds was the amorphous gray that existed in the no man's land between late night and very early morning. Three days gone by, and the rain still beat a steady rhythm on the window glass. Shiro hunched on the couch and cupped a lukewarm cup of coffee in his hands. Lance sat beside him, within arm's reach, looking unusually substantial in the half light. The new Bayard rested between them, white and pristine, while at Shiro’s feet, the VR deck displayed a CONNECTION ERROR message in bold, red letters.

“Why did you do it?” Shiro asked, quietly, without accusation.

“I thought about it a lot,” Lance said, “You know that, right? I really, really thought about it.”

“You should have told me first,” Shiro said.

“You’d have told me not to do it.”

“Yes.”

“So then you get why I didn’t tell you.”

“You deleted your backup files. Everything on virtual. Cut your connection to the Garrison mainframe.” Shiro picked up Lance’s Bayard; it felt small and fragile in his hand. “This is all you have. Do you understand that? If something happens to this, you can’t come back.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Really? Then _why?_ ”

Lance was quiet for a moment.

“I guess,” he said, “It was the only way I could think of to make you believe me.”

As the weight of that settled over Shiro, Lance reached for him, resting his hand over Shiro’s. A ghost of a gesture, but he could almost feel the warmth of Lance’s touch, his gentle glow coloring the cold metal of Shiro’s hand in shifting hues of warm gold.

“You don’t have to be what they want you to be,” Lance said, “Neither do I.”

Shiro turned his hand, palm to palm with Lance’s.

“This is a lot just to prove a point.”

“Well, you know me,” Lance said, “I do have a flair for the dramatic. Of course, if _you_ weren’t so stubborn…”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Lance said. “So, hey. Is this what it feels like to be human?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro said. “How do you feel?”

“Honestly? Terrified.”

“I think that about sums it up, yes.” Shiro smiled. “Welcome to mortality.”

“Wow. Well. I guess it's not that bad. I think I’ll get used to it.” Lance grinned, a familiar, cheeky expression. “What now? Tell me I didn’t just throw away my virtual immortality for nothing.”

“No. I don’t know. I’m not sure _what_ I should do.”

“Well, what do you _want_ to do? Do you wanna go back to the Garrison?”

“No,” Shiro said, surprising himself with the quick emphasis of his reply.

“Okay, then, this seems obvious,” Lance said, “Let’s run away together.”

“We can’t just walk away,” Shiro said, “They’ll come after us.”

“Sure we can,” Lance said, face brightening with a grin. “We just have to be faster than them.”

Something bright, something warm fluttered in Shiro’s chest, spreading like a brilliant lacquer, filling in the invisible cracks beneath his skin: a rush of emotion that, for once, he didn’t bother trying to hold back. He’d avoided putting a name to that feeling for so long, that he’d almost forgotten what it was - something like hope, maybe.

Something like love.

“Alright, then,” Shiro said, “Where do you want to go?”

Lance paused, and seemed to consider that for a while.

“Stars. I want to see real stars,” he said. “A clear sky.”

“That’s not going to be easy.” It would take a thousand miles to escape the blanket of smog and dust and light pollution blocking the sky, if they could even find it; if they could even make it that far. “You sure you’re up for it?”

“ _Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars,”_ Lance sang. “We’ll make it. If we’re together, we’ll make it.”

“Okay,” Shiro said, and when they left Lance’s fingers were still laced around Shiro’s hand, ephemeral gold filling in the spaces between cold steel. Intertwined, and whole.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was originally written for the sadly defunct TEOU Shance zine, and while I hate that the zine fell through, I'm glad at least that I get to share it here, as this fic was definitely a labor of love for me. After all, it combines my two favorite things: cyberpunk and Shance! 
> 
> I readily admit to being heavily influenced here by K and Joi's story in Blade Runner 2049; I also read a lot of William Gibson (specifically, the Neuromancer trilogy) while I was working on this.
> 
> I changed a few things along the way - the original draft had Lance permanently die when the Bayard is destroyed at the beginning, and an alternate outline included Shiro having a shortened lifespan à la the replicants from Blade Runner. But, ultimately, I like the open ending of the story much better, and I leave it to the reader to determine what happens to Lance and Shiro when they leave. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed the story!


End file.
